Catalytic converters are one of the
important parts of automobile industry and are used primarily to change
combustion chemicals into less polluting emissions and in case of fuel cells
they are used for converting water into hydrogen. Previously used catalysts
faced one serious drawback, the chemical reactions took place unevenly over the
surface of the metal resulting in non utilization of large part of the catalyst
which is not desirable.
Chemists at The Berkeley University
have successfully developed a new type of catalyst that converts water more
efficiently providing an alternative to the previous ones. The new
catalyst is called Molybdenite.
It is a combination of Molybdenum and sulphur. This material works perfectly
for the conversion of water into hydrogen. When lots of such catalysts were
used with acidic water they produced considerable amount of hydrogen. Presently
high amount of research is required before commercial utilization of the
catalyst Member of the research team Christopher Chang considers
this to be just the first step towards more efficient development.
Chang’s method is
simple and creates materials with billions of active sites on a ridged wafer
could allow cheaper, commercially feasible catalysts.Source: Engineer
